The Restaurant Technology Stack: Tech You Need to Run Your Business
Explore the modern restaurant tech stack, from all-encompassing systems to niche providers with close integrations. Get a clearer picture of the tech needed to run your business.
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way restaurants operate. The lockdown accelerated the adoption of online ordering and delivery tech as dining rooms closed and people were stuck at home. It has also brought contactless ordering and payment to the fore, especially as restaurants prepare to reopen with new sanitation and distancing measures.
As restaurants turn to digital solutions to cope with this rapid change, the challenge for restaurant owners is to unite the tech and get the different systems to talk to each other for maximum efficiency.
Let’s examine the modern restaurant tech stack more closely, from the most comprehensive systems to niche providers that rely on close integrations with other tech platforms, to give you a clearer picture of the technology you need to run your business.
Essential tech for the modern restaurant and the post-COVID-19 world
POS (point of sale) systems
You probably already have a POS system—in the digital age, it's not optional. The question is, how much can it do? Is it limited to taking payments and orders, or does it also provide inventory management, a reservations system, and kitchen and shift management tools?
The biggest players in the POS world, such as Revel, Square, Micros, and Aloha Cloud, turn the sales terminal into a restaurant's all-purpose software hub. Some even provide ordering and payment hardware.
As time passes, upstarts, such as Lightspeed, ICR Touch, and TouchBistro, among many others, try to compete and grow, filling more specific niches and providing integrations with other task-specific systems.
The POS is the heart of the restaurant’s tech stack, as it needs to communicate with every other system. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the right integrations are available with whichever POS provider you use.
Delivery tech
Third-party delivery platforms are growing rapidly, especially post-COVID-19. Therefore, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a system to handle delivery orders and manage the driver or customer pick-up process. Implementing the right system can save on staff costs and help you manage orders so the kitchen runs efficiently.
Today, the biggest delivery players are familiar names: DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Just Eat, and Grubhub. They provide restaurants with a sales platform and take the burden of delivery off their hands. The problem for restaurants is integrating multiple partners into their operations. It can become a nightmare for staff to juggle multiple tablets and re-punch every order into the POS system.
Aggregators help restaurants by allowing them to use multiple delivery services from one platform. Deliverect is a leader in this space, offering seamless integration with the biggest delivery partners into your existing systems so that all orders go directly to the POS system and are sent to the kitchen in a consistent format.
Another headache of using multiple third-party delivery partners is having to run menu changes by them and log in to multiple accounts to edit your menu on all the platforms, even to make the smallest change. Deliverect allows you to make changes from one central dashboard fed to all your delivery partners.
If you plan to gain the maximum exposure by using multiple third-party delivery partners, a solution like Deliverect is the best way to make your operations efficient and ultimately profitable.
Inventory management tools
Inventory management systems aim to remove the tedious labor of manually managing restaurant stock and ordering. The systems automate many processes traditionally managed by staff to eliminate human error, reduce waste, and prevent over-ordering.
They save time by automating many processes and use suggestive ordering to help you plan better, reduce food waste, and save money.
Having your inventory management system linked to your POS makes a lot of sense if it’s not already provided under the same system. This allows seamless data movement from front to back-of-house, giving you a clearer and more complete picture of stock levels, costs, and ordering needs.
POS providers offer good inventory management tools, but if you have specific needs and values, you might consider integrating with a more powerful, task-specific tech platform.
Online reservation systems
Online reservations are increasingly becoming the norm for restaurants. Customers expect to be able to view available reservation slots and make a booking directly without waiting for a response to an email or picking up the phone.
Digital reservation systems tend to have great features for the restaurant's front-of-house staff, such as visual interfaces that can help with table and waitlist management during service. The software is usually available on tablets, syncs up with the POS system, and enables staff to add reservation notes and guest details to help the servers provide the best possible experience for guests.
Owning customer data is super important; your reservation system will help you collect as much information as possible. For example, knowing a customer’s favorite drink when they arrive or their food allergies in advance is key to building loyalty. You can target your best customers with personalized offers, such as email offering free Champagne if they dine in on their birthday.
Some of the biggest players, like Sevenrooms, Opentable, and TableUp, focus on improving the customer experience and helping restaurants utilize customer data for marketing purposes. So, they tend to include a CRM (customer relationship management) system and other marketing features to help you use the data to maximum effect.
Takeaway, click and collect, and mobile order-ahead tech
There are many auxiliary tools to help restaurants set up their own ordering apps and delivery systems, including Flipdish, Innovorder, and Slerp. Big nationwide chains like Starbucks, Domino’s, and Dunkin use mobile order-ahead tech to give customers a super convenient experience via their mobile devices.
During Covid-19, the idea of mobile ordering from the table when dining in is becoming more relevant. Customers can order straight from their phones through an ordering app by scanning a QR code at the table.
This means the entire ordering and payment process can be done through the app, eliminating much of the contact involved in a traditional restaurant ordering process, i.e., handling physical menus, speaking to wait staff, and paying via a terminal or by cash.
Analytics and reporting
In the digital age, using all the data you can to improve your systems and processes is crucial. The main players we have been discussing tend to either offer their analytics and reporting or integrate with third-party providers that provide this capability seamlessly.
The main providers we’ve mentioned, such as the biggest POS providers, reservations systems, and delivery aggregators like Deliverect, all offer built-in analytics and reporting tools specific to their operations.
Integrations with other tech solutions
As mentioned, integrations are key to creating a viable restaurant tech stack. With so much incredible technology transforming restaurant operations, no system can do everything, so you must use integrations to some extent.
By examining which systems have integrations, you can decide which are best suited to your restaurant’s needs and which will work best with your existing systems.
The good news is, for most tech companies, it is in their interests to integrate with the other top players, and the only thing stopping them is the work that goes into this. So, moving forward, you will see more and better integrations between the top players in the industry.
Integrations also help you cope with an uncertain future and the new tech it will undoubtedly bring, such as robotic kitchens, more Artificial Intelligence in every aspect, and last-mile drone delivery.
The right tech stack to grow your business and improve the customer journey
As we’ve seen in each aspect of your restaurant, the right tech improves data management, frees staff from tedious work, and makes your operations more efficient overall.
The benefits of implementing the right tech stack are huge. Contactless ordering and payment will be the ‘new normal,’ food delivery is continuing to expand, and customers are generally becoming more comfortable with a fully digital restaurant experience.
You offer your staff and customers more convenience and a better experience, but the biggest bonus with an integrated tech stack is access to customer data. With the right tech in place, you can own customer data and use it to build loyalty, offer personalized offers and experiences, analyze trends, and improve every aspect of the customer journey.
